The Five Brothers' Dream

After the Ma family reunion, the most solemn day of all was the day they ascended South Heavenly Temple to honor their ancestors.
That morning, before dawn had yet broken, the small town of Qianzhou still lay sunken in pale blue mist. The distant mountains seemed asleep; the river flowed without sound. Only a few cocks crowed from deep beneath the tiled eaves, their calls coming one after another through the dimness.
Zhao Youlan rose earlier than everyone else. Before the stove, she washed her hands clean, changed into a plain blue blouse, and took from an old wooden chest a square of white silk folded with perfect care. The silk was not precious. Its corners had already yellowed somewhat with age. Yet it was an old thing brought out from the ancestral home in Jiangnan, and had once wrapped the Ma family’s ancestral account books, family letters, and the iron abacus left behind by the grandfather.
Ma Cunhui stood in the doorway and watched as she gently placed the white silk into a bamboo basket.
In a low voice, he asked, “You are bringing this too?”
Zhao Youlan nodded. “Our ancestors began with silk and tea. Today we go to honor them. We should let them see that their descendants have not forgotten their roots.”
Ma Cunhui said nothing. He only reached out and touched the rim of the basket. After a long while, he said softly, “Through all these years, everything scattered. Fortunately, you still remembered.”
Zhao Youlan lifted her head and looked at him. There were tears in her eyes, yet she smiled.
“It is not I who remembered. It is the days themselves that remembered for us.”
In the morning light, Heavenly Mountain gradually awoke.
On both sides of the mountain path, pines and cypresses stood dark and ancient, and bamboo shadows trembled in the cold. The early autumn wind blew upward from the valley, carrying the damp breath of the stream and the hidden fragrance of wild osmanthus. Farther away, the red leaves had begun to take on color, like rouge suddenly appearing at the temples of an aging person, and also like small lamps silently lit by Heaven and Earth.
Dozens of members of the Ma clan slowly climbed the blue-stone steps. The elderly were supported by the younger generation; children held the corners of their mothers’ clothes. No one spoke loudly. There were only the sounds of footsteps, rustling sleeves, bamboo staffs lightly touching stone steps, and the cries of birds answering one another in the mountain.
When they reached Heavenly Gate, everyone stopped almost at the same time.
The stone-carved couplet upon the gate appeared especially profound in the morning mist:
If one listens only with the ear, one will never truly understand;
Only when the eye hears sound does knowing begin.
Ma Cunhui lifted his head and looked at it for a long time. Then he suddenly said softly, “When I was young, I never understood words like these. I always thought they were merely mysterious for the sake of mystery. Only now do I know that some sounds truly are not heard by the ears.”
Ma Gaohui, who usually loved jokes more than anyone, put away his casual expression at this moment.
“Yes,” he said. “Mother called us home for decades, but none of us truly heard her. Only after we grew old did we hear it in our hearts.”
Ma Zhihui leaned on his walking stick and gazed into the depths of the mountain gate.
In a grave voice, he said, “Today, let it be counted that we have all heard.”
Master Jichan had already led the monks to welcome them inside the mountain gate.
The old monk wore an ocher kasaya. His white brows hung low. Behind him stood his disciples Huikong, Huiyi, Huiqiu, Huile (Lele), and others. Huikong held the small guiding chime. Huiyi was in charge of the Dharma drum. Huiqiu carried the scripture case. Huile held the wooden fish. The bronze chime was clear as moonlight in the morning, and the drumhead was covered with yellow silk embroidered with lotus patterns, signifying that “the lotus rises from mud, yet the heart remains unstained by dust.” When the mountain wind passed, the monks’ robes stirred slightly, as though the entire ancient temple had joined its palms to welcome the family.
Jichan looked at the three Ma brothers and slowly said, “People have birth and death. Families have gathering and separation. Gathering and separation are appearances; birth and death are also appearances. Today you have come up the mountain not to ask your ancestors to bless you with wealth and honor, but to ask yourselves to remember where you came from. When the place of origin is clear, the road ahead will not cause panic.”
Ma Cunhui joined his palms, his voice somewhat choked. “Master, we have walked too far.”
Jichan gently shook his head. “Distance is not to be feared. If the heart has not forgotten, even a thousand mountains and ten thousand waters are still the road home.”
The ancestral ceremony was held in Kṣitigarbha Hall.
Several days earlier, Zhao Youlan had come ahead to prepare. Perfected Zitian, together with the disciples of Muyang Abbey, had helped rearrange the ancestral tablets inside the hall. Kṣitigarbha Hall was built against the mountain. Beneath its eaves hung bronze bells, which sounded faintly whenever the wind rose, like distant bells heard in a dream. Before the hall lay blue bricks, with fine moss growing between the seams. The offering table inside was made of old camphor wood. After many years of incense smoke, its surface had darkened until it looked like an ancient well.
Upon the altar were arranged a bronze incense burner, a bowl of pure water, lotus candlesticks, five offering cups, a ruyi fruit tray, vegetarian substitutes for the three sacrificial animals, five-grain rice, clear tea, longevity peaches, prosperity cakes, red dates, lotus seeds, longan, and peanuts.
Each item held meaning. The incense burner represented the true fragrance of discipline and concentration. The pure water represented the clarity of the heart-ground. The lotus lamps represented the light that remains even upon a lost road. The five-grain rice represented not forgetting the land. The prosperity cakes represented the flourishing of descendants. The clear tea was a wisp of old soul offered to their Jiangnan homeland.
Daoyin was there as well.
She wore a pale gray Daoist robe and held a glass lotus lamp in both hands, standing quietly behind Perfected Zitian. Years had passed. The little girl who had once gathered pine resin had grown into a pure and graceful young woman. Her brows and eyes were like autumn water newly cleared; her expression was like a mountain moon unstained by dust. She wore no rouge, no powder, no hairpins or ornaments, yet possessed a clean fragrance rarely found in worldly women, as though a white lotus had opened within thin mist.
From a distance, Ma Rende saw her, and suddenly remembered the pine grove of childhood and that faint thread of pine incense. A tenderness and ache he could not name passed through his heart.
Old Master Jichan inherited a line of practice descending from the venerable Master Xuyun, and in ordinary days his cultivation was strict.
He knew that in the Dharma-ending age, the human heart was restless. If young people only knew how to burn incense and kowtow, but did not understand the meaning of scripture, they could easily turn cultivation into superstition. Therefore, at South Heavenly Temple, besides leading the community in morning and evening practice, reciting the Buddha’s name, and sitting in meditation, he also placed great importance on reading the scriptures.
When there was no work to be done in the daytime, the young novice monks and little Daoist girls would sit beneath the corridor to read and learn characters. First they read the Heart Sutra and the Amitabha Sutra, then the easier passages from the Universal Gate Chapter and the Kṣitigarbha Sutra. If they did not recognize a character, it was taught to them one by one. If they did not understand the meaning, it was slowly explained.
Old Master Jichan often said, “Scripture is not recited for the Buddha to hear. It is recited for one’s own heart to hear. When the heart is upright, the road will not go astray.”
At that time Daoyin was still young. Sitting among the children, holding an old scripture book in her hands, she read with great seriousness.
Sometimes she asked, “Master, what does it mean to let go?”
The old master smiled and said, “What you like, do not grasp too tightly. What you dislike, do not hate too deeply. Learn slowly, and you will understand.”
At the time she could not fully understand these words, yet she kept them all in her heart.
Seeing Zhao Youlan arrive, Perfected Zitian took a small embroidered pouch from beneath the offering table.
“Youlan,” she said softly, “this was found a few days ago beneath an old tablet base when we were arranging the ancestral tablets.”
Zhao Youlan took it and opened it. Inside was a piece of old embroidered cloth. Its color had faded, and the edges had grown brittle, yet one could still make out an orchid stitched upon it, the needlework fine and dense, elegant and lifelike.
Zhao Youlan had only to look at it once before her whole body froze.
“These are the old madam’s stitches,” she said, her voice so light it could barely be heard. “When she was young, she loved embroidering orchids most. She said orchids do not contend with spring; their fragrance lives where no one is looking.”
Ma Cunhui came over and recognized it too. He reached out, yet did not touch it at once, as though afraid of disturbing his departed mother.
In a low voice, he asked, “How could it be here?”
Perfected Zitian sighed. “I imagine that when the old madam set up the tablet here years ago, she pressed it beneath the base with her own hands. She told no one, yet left a piece of her heart for those who came after.”
At these words, all the Ma family fell silent.
Ma Gaohui suddenly knelt down.
The kneeling came without warning, so that even those beside him had no time to support him. He knelt before the offering table and took from his breast a small old copper button, placing it beside the embroidered orchid cloth. That copper button had been sewn onto his clothing by his mother when he left home as a young man. In all the decades away from home, he had changed clothes countless times; only this one button had been kept close against his body, never lost.
“Mother,” he said, choking, “Gaohui has come home.”
Once those words were spoken, even the wind through the hall seemed to stop.
Ma Zhihui’s eyes reddened, and he slowly knelt as well. Ma Gaohui, who in ordinary days possessed a tongue so glib and eloquent, was now left only with trembling. In a low voice, he said, “Mother, I spent half my life drifting outside, and still never became a man with a family. Do not blame me.”
Ma Cunhui knelt last. His forehead touched the ground, and for a long time he did not rise.
Zhao Youlan stood behind him, tears silently falling down her cheeks. She suddenly remembered how the old madam had taught her to recognize herbs, to simmer medicinal soup, to manage a household, and to endure. That white-haired old woman had once said to her before the stove, “Youlan, what a woman guards is not a single house. It is the soul of a family.” Only now did Youlan understand that through all these years, what she had guarded was far more than five children, far more than one small courtyard. What she had guarded was a thread of incense fire that refused to be extinguished through the years of wandering.
Master Jichan took three sticks of incense and placed them in the burner.
“The first stick honors Heaven and Earth, both sentient and compassionate. The second honors ancestors of virtue. The third honors the hearts of those still living.”
Huile struck the wooden fish, and the recitation of the Kṣitigarbha Sutra began.
At first, the scripture sound was like a fine spring emerging from stone. Gradually, as it rose, it became like rivers entering the sea. Huikong’s guiding chime rang clear and pure. Huiyi’s Dharma drum was low and deep. When Huiqiu turned the scripture pages, their faint sound was like autumn leaves falling upon water.
Seven complete recitations of the Kṣitigarbha Sutra were chanted, one after another, from morning until dusk. In the hall, incense smoke curled and coiled, and the lamplight shone like stars. More than a hundred clan members either knelt or stood. The old closed their eyes and wept. The children joined their palms in innocence. Some thought of their homeland. Some thought of their parents. Some thought of all the winding roads their own lives had taken.
Between the living and the dead, there seemed to be only a single burner of incense smoke. Between the past and the present, there seemed to be only one sound of the wooden fish.
During the fifth recitation, a fine rain suddenly began to fall outside the hall.
The mountain rain came gently, with no thunder and no violent wind. It was only as though Heaven and Earth had suddenly lowered countless transparent threads. Rain fell upon the tiles, upon pine needles, upon stone steps, every sound delicate and dense. Yet the bright lamps within the hall shone all the more clearly. Beneath the central “Lamp of Original Vow” lay the old madam’s embroidered orchid cloth and Yuanhui’s old copper button. The lamp flame shone upon the embroidery, and the orchid seemed slowly to bloom in the light.
Looking at that lamp, Ma Rende suddenly understood that ancestors were not merely cold names upon tablets. They too had once been living people of flesh and breath. They too had been young. They too had loved. They too had hurried through the world, lost what they cherished, and wept silently on some night for the futures of their descendants. Now they had returned to dust, to mountains and rivers, to a single lamp, a wisp of incense, and a stretch of scripture sound. Yet they had not truly vanished. They had become family tradition, become bloodline, become the goodness and dignity that a person still refuses to lose even in hardship.
作者：evening, the seven recitations were complete.
Master Jichan stood before the hall. The mountain rain had stopped. The clouds split open, and the setting sun shone down from among the western peaks. Ten thousand rays of golden light spread across the rooftops of South Heavenly Temple. The distant mountains were vast and dim; nearby, the pines roared like the sea. The bronze bell beneath the eave of Kṣitigarbha Hall sounded softly, as though someone had returned from a very far place, and was also bidding farewell from a very far place.
Jichan slowly said, “The lamp you have seen today will one day burn out. The scripture you have heard today will one day fall silent. The people you love will one day part from you. Yet when the lamp ends, the light does not end. When the scripture ceases, the vow does not cease. When a person departs, virtue does not depart. Birth, death, and rebirth are not merely coming and going. To remember gratitude and righteousness amid coming and going—this is the deepest cultivation in the human world.”
When Ma Cunhui heard this, he could no longer hold back, and burst into sobs.
His crying seemed to release all the sorrow he had pressed against his chest for half a lifetime. When the ancestral property scattered, he had not cried. When he left Jiangnan, he had not cried. When the brothers went their separate ways, he had not cried. Even when his mother was buried, he had only clenched his teeth and endured. But now, kneeling with his two brothers before the ancestral tablets, with more than a hundred descendants behind them, and with his dead mother’s old embroidery reappearing beneath the lamp, he suddenly felt that at last he no longer had to hold himself upright.
Ma Zhihui reached out to support him.
Ma Gaohui wiped his face with his sleeve, yet the more he wiped, the wetter it became.
Still kneeling, he shifted to his second brother’s side and, like the boy he had once been, leaned his head against Cunhui’s shoulder. In a hoarse voice, he said, “Second Brother, all these years, it was hard on you to guard the family.”
Ma Cunhui shook his head, sobbing so hard he could barely speak. “I did not guard it well. I only… could not bear to let it scatter.”
Zhao Youlan crouched behind him and gently held his hand.
“It has not scattered. Look. They have all come back.”
At these words, the younger people behind them also reddened around the eyes.
Though Ma Xinde was still young, he understood for the first time the weight inside adults’ tears. He lifted his head and saw Daoyin standing beside the lamp. There were tears in the young woman’s eyes too, but they did not fall. She only stood quietly with palms joined, like a white lotus holding dew.
At last, everyone moved to the square before the temple for a group photograph.
Washed by mountain rain, Heavenly Mountain looked so clear it was almost transparent. Evening clouds shone upon the red leaves, and the leaves burned like fire. The light fell upon white walls and dark tiles, making the temple appear like a painting. It fell upon every person’s face, and all the wrinkles, tear marks, and smiles became gentle and solemn.
The elders sat in front, the younger generation stood behind, and the children crouched in the first row. Master Jichan sat in the center, with Perfected Zitian at his side. Daoyin held the lotus lamp and stood among the disciples of Muyang Abbey. The Ma brothers sat shoulder to shoulder, and behind them were their children, relatives, and friends, like a great tree once scattered by wind and rain finally drawing its branches together again in the dusk.
The photographer raised the camera and called, “Look here.”
Just before the shutter fell, Ma Gaohui suddenly lifted his head and shouted into the mountain wind:
“Mother, we have come home!”
In that instant, more than a hundred people first froze, then some laughed, some cried, and some lowered their heads with palms joined. The echo lingered through the valley, as though someone in the distance had truly answered.
The shutter clicked.
That photograph was treasured by the Ma family for many years afterward. In the picture, the clouds above Heavenly Mountain had opened to sunlight, the ancient temple bell tower stood still, and several dozen people were gathered in the same autumn light. Yet what later generations gazed at longest was not the crowd, nor the mountain scenery, but the small bright lamp at the entrance of Kṣitigarbha Hall.
Beneath the lamp lay a piece of old embroidered cloth.
Upon the cloth, an orchid bloomed without sound.
It was as though, after passing through separation, death, wandering, and reunion, a whole family had finally understood before the Buddha: life is only a journey borrowed from mountains and rivers, a body borrowed from one’s parents, and a stretch of affinity borrowed through one’s children. We come empty-handed and leave empty-handed. Only love and gratitude can remain for a long time, undying, within the great river of rebirth.